1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to a computing system. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to method and apparatus for improving the energy efficiency of a computing system by mitigating data errors and memory address errors and by recycling energy.
2. Background
Reliability and energy efficiency have been and continue to be important issues in computing. However, as computing systems become more and more complex and the number of hardware components in these computing systems increases, improving the energy efficiency of these computing systems while ensuring reliability may become more difficult than desired.
Currently, the increase in the number of components per square inch of an integrated circuit over time may be approximated by Moore's Law. Moore's law is an observation that the number of transistors per square inch of integrated circuits has approximately doubled every few years. Moore's law projects that this trend will continue for the next few decades.
Based on Moore's law, the power or energy dissipated per transistor should decrease by approximately half every few years to avoid overheating. However, reducing the power or energy in the signals used by computing systems may eventually create reliability concerns. For example, reducing transistor power may eventually result in signals that are too weak to reliably define the intended values of binary digits. Consequently, the data generated by and processed by computing systems using lower-powered transistors may be more error-prone.
Higher-powered transistors may be used in accordance with adiabatic principles to reduce these types of errors without overheating. Using the energy in higher-powered transistors multiple times before dissipating the energy to the environment creates the same overall effect as using lower-powered transistors. If the number of times energy is recycled can approximately double every few years, the doubling of the number of components predicted by Moore's Law could continue. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that take into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as other possible issues.